Opis ebooka The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Brothers Karamazov is the final novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Brothers Karamazov is a passionate philosophical novel set in 19th century Russia, that enters deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia. Dostoyevsky composed much of the novel in Staraya Russa, which inspired the main setting. Since its publication, it has been acclaimed as one of the supreme achievements in literature.
The Brothers Karamazov displays a number of modern elements. Dostoyevsky composed the book with a variety of literary techniques. Though privy to many of the thoughts and feelings of the protagonists, the narrator is a self-proclaimed writer; he discusses his own mannerisms and personal perceptions so often in the novel that he becomes a character. Through his descriptions, the narrator's voice merges imperceptibly into the tone of the people he is describing, often extending into the characters' most personal thoughts. In addition to the principal narrator there are several sections narrated by other characters entirely, such as the story of the Grand Inquisitor and Zosima's confessions. This technique enhances the theme of truth, making many aspects of the tale completely subjective.

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Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Brothers Karamazov

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The Brothers Karamazov

By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov

Alexey Fyodorovitch
Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a land
owner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered
among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened
thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place.
For the present I will only say that this "landowner"--for
so we used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on
his own estate--was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be
met with, a type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless.
But he was one of those senseless persons who are very well capable
of looking after their worldly affairs, and, apparently, after
nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovitch, for instance, began with next to
nothing; his estate was of the smallest; he ran to dine at other
men's tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet at his death it
appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash. At the
same time, he was all his life one of the most senseless, fantastical
fellows in the whole district. I repeat, it was not stupidity--the
majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and intelligent
enough--but just senselessness, and a peculiar national form of it.

He was married
twice, and had three sons, the eldest, Dmitri, by his first wife, and
two, Ivan and Alexey, by his second. Fyodor Pavlovitch's first wife,
Adelaïda Ivanovna, belonged to a fairly rich and distinguished
noble family, also landowners in our district, the Miüsovs. How
it came to pass that an heiress, who was also a beauty, and moreover
one of those vigorous, intelligent girls, so common in this
generation, but sometimes also to be found in the last, could have
married such a worthless, puny weakling, as we all called him, I
won't attempt to explain. I knew a young lady of the last "romantic"
generation who after some years of an enigmatic passion for a
gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at any moment,
invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and ended by throwing
herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid river from a
high bank, almost a precipice, and so perished, entirely to satisfy
her own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare's Ophelia. Indeed, if
this precipice, a chosen and favorite spot of hers, had been less
picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank in its place, most
likely the suicide would never have taken place. This is a fact, and
probably there have been not a few similar instances in the last two
or three generations. Adelaïda Ivanovna Miüsov's action was
similarly, no doubt, an echo of other people's ideas, and was due to
the irritation caused by lack of mental freedom. She wanted, perhaps,
to show her feminine independence, to override class distinctions and
the despotism of her family. And a pliable imagination persuaded her,
we must suppose, for a brief moment, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite
of his parasitic position, was one of the bold and ironical spirits
of that progressive epoch, though he was, in fact, an ill-natured
buffoon and nothing more. What gave the marriage piquancy was that it
was preceded by an elopement, and this greatly captivated Adelaïda
Ivanovna's fancy. Fyodor Pavlovitch's position at the time made him
specially eager for any such enterprise, for he was passionately
anxious to make a career in one way or another. To attach himself to
a good family and obtain a dowry was an alluring prospect. As for
mutual love it did not exist apparently, either in the bride or in
him, in spite of Adelaïda Ivanovna's beauty. This was, perhaps,
a unique case of the kind in the life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was
always of a voluptuous temper, and ready to run after any petticoat
on the slightest encouragement. She seems to have been the only woman
who made no particular appeal to his senses.

Immediately after
the elopement Adelaïda Ivanovna discerned in a flash that she
had no feeling for her husband but contempt. The marriage accordingly
showed itself in its true colors with extraordinary rapidity.
Although the family accepted the event pretty quickly and apportioned
the runaway bride her dowry, the husband and wife began to lead a
most disorderly life, and there were everlasting scenes between them.
It was said that the young wife showed incomparably more generosity
and dignity than Fyodor Pavlovitch, who, as is now known, got hold of
all her money up to twenty-five thousand roubles as soon as she
received it, so that those thousands were lost to her for ever. The
little village and the rather fine town house which formed part of
her dowry he did his utmost for a long time to transfer to his name,
by means of some deed of conveyance. He would probably have
succeeded, merely from her moral fatigue and desire to get rid of
him, and from the contempt and loathing he aroused by his persistent
and shameless importunity. But, fortunately, Adelaïda Ivanovna's
family intervened and circumvented his greediness. It is known for a
fact that frequent fights took place between the husband and wife,
but rumor had it that Fyodor Pavlovitch did not beat his wife but was
beaten by her, for she was a hot-tempered, bold, dark-browed,
impatient woman, possessed of remarkable physical strength. Finally,
she left the house and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovitch with a
destitute divinity student, leaving Mitya, a child of three years
old, in her husband's hands. Immediately Fyodor Pavlovitch introduced
a regular harem into the house, and abandoned himself to orgies of
drunkenness. In the intervals he used to drive all over the province,
complaining tearfully to each and all of Adelaïda Ivanovna's
having left him, going into details too disgraceful for a husband to
mention in regard to his own married life. What seemed to gratify him
and flatter his self-love most was to play the ridiculous part of the
injured husband, and to parade his woes with embellishments.

"One would
think that you'd got a promotion, Fyodor Pavlovitch, you seem so
pleased in spite of your sorrow," scoffers said to him. Many
even added that he was glad of a new comic part in which to play the
buffoon, and that it was simply to make it funnier that he pretended
to be unaware of his ludicrous position. But, who knows, it may have
been simplicity. At last he succeeded in getting on the track of his
runaway wife. The poor woman turned out to be in Petersburg, where
she had gone with her divinity student, and where she had thrown
herself into a life of complete emancipation. Fyodor Pavlovitch at
once began bustling about, making preparations to go to Petersburg,
with what object he could not himself have said. He would perhaps
have really gone; but having determined to do so he felt at once
entitled to fortify himself for the journey by another bout of
reckless drinking. And just at that time his wife's family received
the news of her death in Petersburg. She had died quite suddenly in a
garret, according to one story, of typhus, or as another version had
it, of starvation. Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk when he heard of his
wife's death, and the story is that he ran out into the street and
began shouting with joy, raising his hands to Heaven: "Lord, now
lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace," but others say he
wept without restraint like a little child, so much so that people
were sorry for him, in spite of the repulsion he inspired. It is
quite possible that both versions were true, that he rejoiced at his
release, and at the same time wept for her who released him. As a
general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naïve and
simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.

He Gets Rid Of His Eldest Son

You can easily
imagine what a father such a man could be and how he would bring up
his children. His behavior as a father was exactly what might be
expected. He completely abandoned the child of his marriage with
Adelaïda Ivanovna, not from malice, nor because of his
matrimonial grievances, but simply because he forgot him. While he
was wearying every one with his tears and complaints, and turning his
house into a sink of debauchery, a faithful servant of the family,
Grigory, took the three-year-old Mitya into his care. If he hadn't
looked after him there would have been no one even to change the
baby's little shirt.

It happened moreover
that the child's relations on his mother's side forgot him too at
first. His grandfather was no longer living, his widow, Mitya's
grandmother, had moved to Moscow, and was seriously ill, while his
daughters were married, so that Mitya remained for almost a whole
year in old Grigory's charge and lived with him in the servant's
cottage. But if his father had remembered him (he could not, indeed,
have been altogether unaware of his existence) he would have sent him
back to the cottage, as the child would only have been in the way of
his debaucheries. But a cousin of Mitya's mother, Pyotr
Alexandrovitch Miüsov, happened to return from Paris. He lived
for many years afterwards abroad, but was at that time quite a young
man, and distinguished among the Miüsovs as a man of enlightened
ideas and of European culture, who had been in the capitals and
abroad. Towards the end of his life he became a Liberal of the type
common in the forties and fifties. In the course of his career he had
come into contact with many of the most Liberal men of his epoch,
both in Russia and abroad. He had known Proudhon and Bakunin
personally, and in his declining years was very fond of describing
the three days of the Paris Revolution of February 1848, hinting that
he himself had almost taken part in the fighting on the barricades.
This was one of the most grateful recollections of his youth. He had
an independent property of about a thousand souls, to reckon in the
old style. His splendid estate lay on the outskirts of our little
town and bordered on the lands of our famous monastery, with which
Pyotr Alexandrovitch began an endless lawsuit, almost as soon as he
came into the estate, concerning the rights of fishing in the river
or wood-cutting in the forest, I don't know exactly which. He
regarded it as his duty as a citizen and a man of culture to open an
attack upon the "clericals." Hearing all about Adelaïda
Ivanovna, whom he, of course, remembered, and in whom he had at one
time been interested, and learning of the existence of Mitya, he
intervened, in spite of all his youthful indignation and contempt for
Fyodor Pavlovitch. He made the latter's acquaintance for the first
time, and told him directly that he wished to undertake the child's
education. He used long afterwards to tell as a characteristic touch,
that when he began to speak of Mitya, Fyodor Pavlovitch looked for
some time as though he did not understand what child he was talking
about, and even as though he was surprised to hear that he had a
little son in the house. The story may have been exaggerated, yet it
must have been something like the truth.

Fyodor Pavlovitch
was all his life fond of acting, of suddenly playing an unexpected
part, sometimes without any motive for doing so, and even to his own
direct disadvantage, as, for instance, in the present case. This
habit, however, is characteristic of a very great number of people,
some of them very clever ones, not like Fyodor Pavlovitch. Pyotr
Alexandrovitch carried the business through vigorously, and was
appointed, with Fyodor Pavlovitch, joint guardian of the child, who
had a small property, a house and land, left him by his mother. Mitya
did, in fact, pass into this cousin's keeping, but as the latter had
no family of his own, and after securing the revenues of his estates
was in haste to return at once to Paris, he left the boy in charge of
one of his cousins, a lady living in Moscow. It came to pass that,
settling permanently in Paris he, too, forgot the child, especially
when the Revolution of February broke out, making an impression on
his mind that he remembered all the rest of his life. The Moscow lady
died, and Mitya passed into the care of one of her married daughters.
I believe he changed his home a fourth time later on. I won't enlarge
upon that now, as I shall have much to tell later of Fyodor
Pavlovitch's firstborn, and must confine myself now to the most
essential facts about him, without which I could not begin my story.

In the first place,
this Mitya, or rather Dmitri Fyodorovitch, was the only one of Fyodor
Pavlovitch's three sons who grew up in the belief that he had
property, and that he would be independent on coming of age. He spent
an irregular boyhood and youth. He did not finish his studies at the
gymnasium, he got into a military school, then went to the Caucasus,
was promoted, fought a duel, and was degraded to the ranks, earned
promotion again, led a wild life, and spent a good deal of money. He
did not begin to receive any income from Fyodor Pavlovitch until he
came of age, and until then got into debt. He saw and knew his
father, Fyodor Pavlovitch, for the first time on coming of age, when
he visited our neighborhood on purpose to settle with him about his
property. He seems not to have liked his father. He did not stay long
with him, and made haste to get away, having only succeeded in
obtaining a sum of money, and entering into an agreement for future
payments from the estate, of the revenues and value of which he was
unable (a fact worthy of note), upon this occasion, to get a
statement from his father. Fyodor Pavlovitch remarked for the first
time then (this, too, should be noted) that Mitya had a vague and
exaggerated idea of his property. Fyodor Pavlovitch was very well
satisfied with this, as it fell in with his own designs. He gathered
only that the young man was frivolous, unruly, of violent passions,
impatient, and dissipated, and that if he could only obtain ready
money he would be satisfied, although only, of course, for a short
time. So Fyodor Pavlovitch began to take advantage of this fact,
sending him from time to time small doles, installments. In the end,
when four years later, Mitya, losing patience, came a second time to
our little town to settle up once for all with his father, it turned
out to his amazement that he had nothing, that it was difficult to
get an account even, that he had received the whole value of his
property in sums of money from Fyodor Pavlovitch, and was perhaps
even in debt to him, that by various agreements into which he had, of
his own desire, entered at various previous dates, he had no right to
expect anything more, and so on, and so on. The young man was
overwhelmed, suspected deceit and cheating, and was almost beside
himself. And, indeed, this circumstance led to the catastrophe, the
account of which forms the subject of my first introductory story, or
rather the external side of it. But before I pass to that story I
must say a little of Fyodor Pavlovitch's other two sons, and of their
origin.

The Second Marriage And The Second Family

Very shortly after
getting his four-year-old Mitya off his hands Fyodor Pavlovitch
married a second time. His second marriage lasted eight years. He
took this second wife, Sofya Ivanovna, also a very young girl, from
another province, where he had gone upon some small piece of business
in company with a Jew. Though Fyodor Pavlovitch was a drunkard and a
vicious debauchee he never neglected investing his capital, and
managed his business affairs very successfully, though, no doubt, not
over-scrupulously. Sofya Ivanovna was the daughter of an obscure
deacon, and was left from childhood an orphan without relations. She
grew up in the house of a general's widow, a wealthy old lady of good
position, who was at once her benefactress and tormentor. I do not
know the details, but I have only heard that the orphan girl, a meek
and gentle creature, was once cut down from a halter in which she was
hanging from a nail in the loft, so terrible were her sufferings from
the caprice and everlasting nagging of this old woman, who was
apparently not bad-hearted but had become an insufferable tyrant
through idleness.

Fyodor Pavlovitch
made her an offer; inquiries were made about him and he was refused.
But again, as in his first marriage, he proposed an elopement to the
orphan girl. There is very little doubt that she would not on any
account have married him if she had known a little more about him in
time. But she lived in another province; besides, what could a little
girl of sixteen know about it, except that she would be better at the
bottom of the river than remaining with her benefactress. So the poor
child exchanged a benefactress for a benefactor. Fyodor Pavlovitch
did not get a penny this time, for the general's widow was furious.
She gave them nothing and cursed them both. But he had not reckoned
on a dowry; what allured him was the remarkable beauty of the
innocent girl, above all her innocent appearance, which had a
peculiar attraction for a vicious profligate, who had hitherto
admired only the coarser types of feminine beauty.

"Those innocent
eyes slit my soul up like a razor," he used to say afterwards,
with his loathsome snigger. In a man so depraved this might, of
course, mean no more than sensual attraction. As he had received no
dowry with his wife, and had, so to speak, taken her "from the
halter," he did not stand on ceremony with her. Making her feel
that she had "wronged" him, he took advantage of her
phenomenal meekness and submissiveness to trample on the elementary
decencies of marriage. He gathered loose women into his house, and
carried on orgies of debauchery in his wife's presence. To show what
a pass things had come to, I may mention that Grigory, the gloomy,
stupid, obstinate, argumentative servant, who had always hated his
first mistress, Adelaïda Ivanovna, took the side of his new
mistress. He championed her cause, abusing Fyodor Pavlovitch in a
manner little befitting a servant, and on one occasion broke up the
revels and drove all the disorderly women out of the house. In the
end this unhappy young woman, kept in terror from her childhood, fell
into that kind of nervous disease which is most frequently found in
peasant women who are said to be "possessed by devils." At
times after terrible fits of hysterics she even lost her reason. Yet
she bore Fyodor Pavlovitch two sons, Ivan and Alexey, the eldest in
the first year of marriage and the second three years later. When she
died, little Alexey was in his fourth year, and, strange as it seems,
I know that he remembered his mother all his life, like a dream, of
course. At her death almost exactly the same thing happened to the
two little boys as to their elder brother, Mitya. They were
completely forgotten and abandoned by their father. They were looked
after by the same Grigory and lived in his cottage, where they were
found by the tyrannical old lady who had brought up their mother. She
was still alive, and had not, all those eight years, forgotten the
insult done her. All that time she was obtaining exact information as
to her Sofya's manner of life, and hearing of her illness and hideous
surroundings she declared aloud two or three times to her retainers:

"It serves her
right. God has punished her for her ingratitude."

Exactly three months
after Sofya Ivanovna's death the general's widow suddenly appeared in
our town, and went straight to Fyodor Pavlovitch's house. She spent
only half an hour in the town but she did a great deal. It was
evening. Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom she had not seen for those eight
years, came in to her drunk. The story is that instantly upon seeing
him, without any sort of explanation, she gave him two good,
resounding slaps on the face, seized him by a tuft of hair, and shook
him three times up and down. Then, without a word, she went straight
to the cottage to the two boys. Seeing, at the first glance, that
they were unwashed and in dirty linen, she promptly gave Grigory,
too, a box on the ear, and announcing that she would carry off both
the children she wrapped them just as they were in a rug, put them in
the carriage, and drove off to her own town. Grigory accepted the
blow like a devoted slave, without a word, and when he escorted the
old lady to her carriage he made her a low bow and pronounced
impressively that, "God would repay her for the orphans."
"You are a blockhead all the same," the old lady shouted to
him as she drove away.

Fyodor Pavlovitch,
thinking it over, decided that it was a good thing, and did not
refuse the general's widow his formal consent to any proposition in
regard to his children's education. As for the slaps she had given
him, he drove all over the town telling the story.

It happened that the
old lady died soon after this, but she left the boys in her will a
thousand roubles each "for their instruction, and so that all be
spent on them exclusively, with the condition that it be so portioned
out as to last till they are twenty-one, for it is more than adequate
provision for such children. If other people think fit to throw away
their money, let them." I have not read the will myself, but I
heard there was something queer of the sort, very whimsically
expressed. The principal heir, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, the Marshal
of Nobility of the province, turned out, however, to be an honest
man. Writing to Fyodor Pavlovitch, and discerning at once that he
could extract nothing from him for his children's education (though
the latter never directly refused but only procrastinated as he
always did in such cases, and was, indeed, at times effusively
sentimental), Yefim Petrovitch took a personal interest in the
orphans. He became especially fond of the younger, Alexey, who lived
for a long while as one of his family. I beg the reader to note this
from the beginning. And to Yefim Petrovitch, a man of a generosity
and humanity rarely to be met with, the young people were more
indebted for their education and bringing up than to any one. He kept
the two thousand roubles left to them by the general's widow intact,
so that by the time they came of age their portions had been doubled
by the accumulation of interest. He educated them both at his own
expense, and certainly spent far more than a thousand roubles upon
each of them. I won't enter into a detailed account of their boyhood
and youth, but will only mention a few of the most important events.
Of the elder, Ivan, I will only say that he grew into a somewhat
morose and reserved, though far from timid boy. At ten years old he
had realized that they were living not in their own home but on other
people's charity, and that their father was a man of whom it was
disgraceful to speak. This boy began very early, almost in his
infancy (so they say at least), to show a brilliant and unusual
aptitude for learning. I don't know precisely why, but he left the
family of Yefim Petrovitch when he was hardly thirteen, entering a
Moscow gymnasium, and boarding with an experienced and celebrated
teacher, an old friend of Yefim Petrovitch. Ivan used to declare
afterwards that this was all due to the "ardor for good works"
of Yefim Petrovitch, who was captivated by the idea that the boy's
genius should be trained by a teacher of genius. But neither Yefim
Petrovitch nor this teacher was living when the young man finished at
the gymnasium and entered the university. As Yefim Petrovitch had
made no provision for the payment of the tyrannical old lady's
legacy, which had grown from one thousand to two, it was delayed,
owing to formalities inevitable in Russia, and the young man was in
great straits for the first two years at the university, as he was
forced to keep himself all the time he was studying. It must be noted
that he did not even attempt to communicate with his father, perhaps
from pride, from contempt for him, or perhaps from his cool common
sense, which told him that from such a father he would get no real
assistance. However that may have been, the young man was by no means
despondent and succeeded in getting work, at first giving sixpenny
lessons and afterwards getting paragraphs on street incidents into
the newspapers under the signature of "Eye-Witness." These
paragraphs, it was said, were so interesting and piquant that they
were soon taken. This alone showed the young man's practical and
intellectual superiority over the masses of needy and unfortunate
students of both sexes who hang about the offices of the newspapers
and journals, unable to think of anything better than everlasting
entreaties for copying and translations from the French. Having once
got into touch with the editors Ivan Fyodorovitch always kept up his
connection with them, and in his latter years at the university he
published brilliant reviews of books upon various special subjects,
so that he became well known in literary circles. But only in his
last year he suddenly succeeded in attracting the attention of a far
wider circle of readers, so that a great many people noticed and
remembered him. It was rather a curious incident. When he had just
left the university and was preparing to go abroad upon his two
thousand roubles, Ivan Fyodorovitch published in one of the more
important journals a strange article, which attracted general notice,
on a subject of which he might have been supposed to know nothing, as
he was a student of natural science. The article dealt with a subject
which was being debated everywhere at the time--the position of the
ecclesiastical courts. After discussing several opinions on the
subject he went on to explain his own view. What was most striking
about the article was its tone, and its unexpected conclusion. Many
of the Church party regarded him unquestioningly as on their side.
And yet not only the secularists but even atheists joined them in
their applause. Finally some sagacious persons opined that the
article was nothing but an impudent satirical burlesque. I mention
this incident particularly because this article penetrated into the
famous monastery in our neighborhood, where the inmates, being
particularly interested in the question of the ecclesiastical courts,
were completely bewildered by it. Learning the author's name, they
were interested in his being a native of the town and the son of
"that Fyodor Pavlovitch." And just then it was that the
author himself made his appearance among us.

Why Ivan
Fyodorovitch had come amongst us I remember asking myself at the time
with a certain uneasiness. This fateful visit, which was the first
step leading to so many consequences, I never fully explained to
myself. It seemed strange on the face of it that a young man so
learned, so proud, and apparently so cautious, should suddenly visit
such an infamous house and a father who had ignored him all his life,
hardly knew him, never thought of him, and would not under any
circumstances have given him money, though he was always afraid that
his sons Ivan and Alexey would also come to ask him for it. And here
the young man was staying in the house of such a father, had been
living with him for two months, and they were on the best possible
terms. This last fact was a special cause of wonder to many others as
well as to me. Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miüsov, of whom we have
spoken already, the cousin of Fyodor Pavlovitch's first wife,
happened to be in the neighborhood again on a visit to his estate. He
had come from Paris, which was his permanent home. I remember that he
was more surprised than any one when he made the acquaintance of the
young man, who interested him extremely, and with whom he sometimes
argued and not without an inner pang compared himself in
acquirements.

"He is proud,"
he used to say, "he will never be in want of pence; he has got
money enough to go abroad now. What does he want here? Every one can
see that he hasn't come for money, for his father would never give
him any. He has no taste for drink and dissipation, and yet his
father can't do without him. They get on so well together!"

That was the truth;
the young man had an unmistakable influence over his father, who
positively appeared to be behaving more decently and even seemed at
times ready to obey his son, though often extremely and even
spitefully perverse.

It was only later
that we learned that Ivan had come partly at the request of, and in
the interests of, his elder brother, Dmitri, whom he saw for the
first time on this very visit, though he had before leaving Moscow
been in correspondence with him about an important matter of more
concern to Dmitri than himself. What that business was the reader
will learn fully in due time. Yet even when I did know of this
special circumstance I still felt Ivan Fyodorovitch to be an
enigmatic figure, and thought his visit rather mysterious.

I may add that Ivan
appeared at the time in the light of a mediator between his father
and his elder brother Dmitri, who was in open quarrel with his father
and even planning to bring an action against him.

The family, I
repeat, was now united for the first time, and some of its members
met for the first time in their lives. The younger brother, Alexey,
had been a year already among us, having been the first of the three
to arrive. It is of that brother Alexey I find it most difficult to
speak in this introduction. Yet I must give some preliminary account
of him, if only to explain one queer fact, which is that I have to
introduce my hero to the reader wearing the cassock of a novice. Yes,
he had been for the last year in our monastery, and seemed willing to
be cloistered there for the rest of his life.

The Third Son, Alyosha

He was only twenty,
his brother Ivan was in his twenty-fourth year at the time, while
their elder brother Dmitri was twenty-seven. First of all, I must
explain that this young man, Alyosha, was not a fanatic, and, in my
opinion at least, was not even a mystic. I may as well give my full
opinion from the beginning. He was simply an early lover of humanity,
and that he adopted the monastic life was simply because at that time
it struck him, so to say, as the ideal escape for his soul struggling
from the darkness of worldly wickedness to the light of love. And the
reason this life struck him in this way was that he found in it at
that time, as he thought, an extraordinary being, our celebrated
elder, Zossima, to whom he became attached with all the warm first
love of his ardent heart. But I do not dispute that he was very
strange even at that time, and had been so indeed from his cradle. I
have mentioned already, by the way, that though he lost his mother in
his fourth year he remembered her all his life--her face, her
caresses, "as though she stood living before me." Such
memories may persist, as every one knows, from an even earlier age,
even from two years old, but scarcely standing out through a whole
lifetime like spots of light out of darkness, like a corner torn out
of a huge picture, which has all faded and disappeared except that
fragment. That is how it was with him. He remembered one still summer
evening, an open window, the slanting rays of the setting sun (that
he recalled most vividly of all); in a corner of the room the holy
image, before it a lighted lamp, and on her knees before the image
his mother, sobbing hysterically with cries and moans, snatching him
up in both arms, squeezing him close till it hurt, and praying for
him to the Mother of God, holding him out in both arms to the image
as though to put him under the Mother's protection ... and suddenly a
nurse runs in and snatches him from her in terror. That was the
picture! And Alyosha remembered his mother's face at that minute. He
used to say that it was frenzied but beautiful as he remembered. But
he rarely cared to speak of this memory to any one. In his childhood
and youth he was by no means expansive, and talked little indeed, but
not from shyness or a sullen unsociability; quite the contrary, from
something different, from a sort of inner preoccupation entirely
personal and unconcerned with other people, but so important to him
that he seemed, as it were, to forget others on account of it. But he
was fond of people: he seemed throughout his life to put implicit
trust in people: yet no one ever looked on him as a simpleton or
naïve person. There was something about him which made one feel
at once (and it was so all his life afterwards) that he did not care
to be a judge of others--that he would never take it upon himself to
criticize and would never condemn any one for anything. He seemed,
indeed, to accept everything without the least condemnation though
often grieving bitterly: and this was so much so that no one could
surprise or frighten him even in his earliest youth. Coming at twenty
to his father's house, which was a very sink of filthy debauchery,
he, chaste and pure as he was, simply withdrew in silence when to
look on was unbearable, but without the slightest sign of contempt or
condemnation. His father, who had once been in a dependent position,
and so was sensitive and ready to take offense, met him at first with
distrust and sullenness. "He does not say much," he used to
say, "and thinks the more." But soon, within a fortnight
indeed, he took to embracing him and kissing him terribly often, with
drunken tears, with sottish sentimentality, yet he evidently felt a
real and deep affection for him, such as he had never been capable of
feeling for any one before.

Every one, indeed,
loved this young man wherever he went, and it was so from his
earliest childhood. When he entered the household of his patron and
benefactor, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, he gained the hearts of all the
family, so that they looked on him quite as their own child. Yet he
entered the house at such a tender age that he could not have acted
from design nor artfulness in winning affection. So that the gift of
making himself loved directly and unconsciously was inherent in him,
in his very nature, so to speak. It was the same at school, though he
seemed to be just one of those children who are distrusted, sometimes
ridiculed, and even disliked by their schoolfellows. He was dreamy,
for instance, and rather solitary. From his earliest childhood he was
fond of creeping into a corner to read, and yet he was a general
favorite all the while he was at school. He was rarely playful or
merry, but any one could see at the first glance that this was not
from any sullenness. On the contrary he was bright and good-tempered.
He never tried to show off among his schoolfellows. Perhaps because
of this, he was never afraid of any one, yet the boys immediately
understood that he was not proud of his fearlessness and seemed to be
unaware that he was bold and courageous. He never resented an insult.
It would happen that an hour after the offense he would address the
offender or answer some question with as trustful and candid an
expression as though nothing had happened between them. And it was
not that he seemed to have forgotten or intentionally forgiven the
affront, but simply that he did not regard it as an affront, and this
completely conquered and captivated the boys. He had one
characteristic which made all his schoolfellows from the bottom class
to the top want to mock at him, not from malice but because it amused
them. This characteristic was a wild fanatical modesty and chastity.
He could not bear to hear certain words and certain conversations
about women. There are "certain" words and conversations
unhappily impossible to eradicate in schools. Boys pure in mind and
heart, almost children, are fond of talking in school among
themselves, and even aloud, of things, pictures, and images of which
even soldiers would sometimes hesitate to speak. More than that, much
that soldiers have no knowledge or conception of is familiar to quite
young children of our intellectual and higher classes. There is no
moral depravity, no real corrupt inner cynicism in it, but there is
the appearance of it, and it is often looked upon among them as
something refined, subtle, daring, and worthy of imitation. Seeing
that Alyosha Karamazov put his fingers in his ears when they talked
of "that," they used sometimes to crowd round him, pull his
hands away, and shout nastiness into both ears, while he struggled,
slipped to the floor, tried to hide himself without uttering one word
of abuse, enduring their insults in silence. But at last they left
him alone and gave up taunting him with being a "regular girl,"
and what's more they looked upon it with compassion as a weakness. He
was always one of the best in the class but was never first.

At the time of Yefim
Petrovitch's death Alyosha had two more years to complete at the
provincial gymnasium. The inconsolable widow went almost immediately
after his death for a long visit to Italy with her whole family,
which consisted only of women and girls. Alyosha went to live in the
house of two distant relations of Yefim Petrovitch, ladies whom he
had never seen before. On what terms he lived with them he did not
know himself. It was very characteristic of him, indeed, that he
never cared at whose expense he was living. In that respect he was a
striking contrast to his elder brother Ivan, who struggled with
poverty for his first two years in the university, maintained himself
by his own efforts, and had from childhood been bitterly conscious of
living at the expense of his benefactor. But this strange trait in
Alyosha's character must not, I think, be criticized too severely,
for at the slightest acquaintance with him any one would have
perceived that Alyosha was one of those youths, almost of the type of
religious enthusiast, who, if they were suddenly to come into
possession of a large fortune, would not hesitate to give it away for
the asking, either for good works or perhaps to a clever rogue. In
general he seemed scarcely to know the value of money, not, of
course, in a literal sense. When he was given pocket-money, which he
never asked for, he was either terribly careless of it so that it was
gone in a moment, or he kept it for weeks together, not knowing what
to do with it.

In later years Pyotr
Alexandrovitch Miüsov, a man very sensitive on the score of
money and bourgeois honesty, pronounced the following judgment, after
getting to know Alyosha:

"Here is
perhaps the one man in the world whom you might leave alone without a
penny, in the center of an unknown town of a million inhabitants, and
he would not come to harm, he would not die of cold and hunger, for
he would be fed and sheltered at once; and if he were not, he would
find a shelter for himself, and it would cost him no effort or
humiliation. And to shelter him would be no burden, but, on the
contrary, would probably be looked on as a pleasure."

He did not finish
his studies at the gymnasium. A year before the end of the course he
suddenly announced to the ladies that he was going to see his father
about a plan which had occurred to him. They were sorry and unwilling
to let him go. The journey was not an expensive one, and the ladies
would not let him pawn his watch, a parting present from his
benefactor's family. They provided him liberally with money and even
fitted him out with new clothes and linen. But he returned half the
money they gave him, saying that he intended to go third class. On
his arrival in the town he made no answer to his father's first
inquiry why he had come before completing his studies, and seemed, so
they say, unusually thoughtful. It soon became apparent that he was
looking for his mother's tomb. He practically acknowledged at the
time that that was the only object of his visit. But it can hardly
have been the whole reason of it. It is more probable that he himself
did not understand and could not explain what had suddenly arisen in
his soul, and drawn him irresistibly into a new, unknown, but
inevitable path. Fyodor Pavlovitch could not show him where his
second wife was buried, for he had never visited her grave since he
had thrown earth upon her coffin, and in the course of years had
entirely forgotten where she was buried.

Fyodor Pavlovitch,
by the way, had for some time previously not been living in our town.
Three or four years after his wife's death he had gone to the south
of Russia and finally turned up in Odessa, where he spent several
years. He made the acquaintance at first, in his own words, "of
a lot of low Jews, Jewesses, and Jewkins," and ended by being
received by "Jews high and low alike." It may be presumed
that at this period he developed a peculiar faculty for making and
hoarding money. He finally returned to our town only three years
before Alyosha's arrival. His former acquaintances found him looking
terribly aged, although he was by no means an old man. He behaved not
exactly with more dignity but with more effrontery. The former
buffoon showed an insolent propensity for making buffoons of others.
His depravity with women was not simply what it used to be, but even
more revolting. In a short time he opened a great number of new
taverns in the district. It was evident that he had perhaps a hundred
thousand roubles or not much less. Many of the inhabitants of the
town and district were soon in his debt, and, of course, had given
good security. Of late, too, he looked somehow bloated and seemed
more irresponsible, more uneven, had sunk into a sort of incoherence,
used to begin one thing and go on with another, as though he were
letting himself go altogether. He was more and more frequently drunk.
And, if it had not been for the same servant Grigory, who by that
time had aged considerably too, and used to look after him sometimes
almost like a tutor, Fyodor Pavlovitch might have got into terrible
scrapes. Alyosha's arrival seemed to affect even his moral side, as
though something had awakened in this prematurely old man which had
long been dead in his soul.

"Do you know,"
he used often to say, looking at Alyosha, "that you are like
her, 'the crazy woman' "--that was what he used to call his dead
wife, Alyosha's mother. Grigory it was who pointed out the "crazy
woman's" grave to Alyosha. He took him to our town cemetery and
showed him in a remote corner a cast-iron tombstone, cheap but
decently kept, on which were inscribed the name and age of the
deceased and the date of her death, and below a four-lined verse,
such as are commonly used on old-fashioned middle-class tombs. To
Alyosha's amazement this tomb turned out to be Grigory's doing. He
had put it up on the poor "crazy woman's" grave at his own
expense, after Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom he had often pestered about
the grave, had gone to Odessa, abandoning the grave and all his
memories. Alyosha showed no particular emotion at the sight of his
mother's grave. He only listened to Grigory's minute and solemn
account of the erection of the tomb; he stood with bowed head and
walked away without uttering a word. It was perhaps a year before he
visited the cemetery again. But this little episode was not without
an influence upon Fyodor Pavlovitch--and a very original one. He
suddenly took a thousand roubles to our monastery to pay for requiems
for the soul of his wife; but not for the second, Alyosha's mother,
the "crazy woman," but for the first, Adelaïda
Ivanovna, who used to thrash him. In the evening of the same day he
got drunk and abused the monks to Alyosha. He himself was far from
being religious; he had probably never put a penny candle before the
image of a saint. Strange impulses of sudden feeling and sudden
thought are common in such types.

I have mentioned
already that he looked bloated. His countenance at this time bore
traces of something that testified unmistakably to the life he had
led. Besides the long fleshy bags under his little, always insolent,
suspicious, and ironical eyes; besides the multitude of deep wrinkles
in his little fat face, the Adam's apple hung below his sharp chin
like a great, fleshy goiter, which gave him a peculiar, repulsive,
sensual appearance; add to that a long rapacious mouth with full
lips, between which could be seen little stumps of black decayed
teeth. He slobbered every time he began to speak. He was fond indeed
of making fun of his own face, though, I believe, he was well
satisfied with it. He used particularly to point to his nose, which
was not very large, but very delicate and conspicuously aquiline. "A
regular Roman nose," he used to say, "with my goiter I've
quite the countenance of an ancient Roman patrician of the decadent
period." He seemed proud of it.

Not long after
visiting his mother's grave Alyosha suddenly announced that he wanted
to enter the monastery, and that the monks were willing to receive
him as a novice. He explained that this was his strong desire, and
that he was solemnly asking his consent as his father. The old man
knew that the elder Zossima, who was living in the monastery
hermitage, had made a special impression upon his "gentle boy."

"That is the
most honest monk among them, of course," he observed, after
listening in thoughtful silence to Alyosha, and seeming scarcely
surprised at his request. "H'm!... So that's where you want to
be, my gentle boy?"

He was half drunk,
and suddenly he grinned his slow half-drunken grin, which was not
without a certain cunning and tipsy slyness. "H'm!... I had a
presentiment that you would end in something like this. Would you
believe it? You were making straight for it. Well, to be sure you
have your own two thousand. That's a dowry for you. And I'll never
desert you, my angel. And I'll pay what's wanted for you there, if
they ask for it. But, of course, if they don't ask, why should we
worry them? What do you say? You know, you spend money like a canary,
two grains a week. H'm!... Do you know that near one monastery
there's a place outside the town where every baby knows there are
none but 'the monks' wives' living, as they are called. Thirty women,
I believe. I have been there myself. You know, it's interesting in
its own way, of course, as a variety. The worst of it is it's awfully
Russian. There are no French women there. Of course they could get
them fast enough, they have plenty of money. If they get to hear of
it they'll come along. Well, there's nothing of that sort here, no
'monks' wives,' and two hundred monks. They're honest. They keep the
fasts. I admit it.... H'm.... So you want to be a monk? And do you
know I'm sorry to lose you, Alyosha; would you believe it, I've
really grown fond of you? Well, it's a good opportunity. You'll pray
for us sinners; we have sinned too much here. I've always been
thinking who would pray for me, and whether there's any one in the
world to do it. My dear boy, I'm awfully stupid about that. You
wouldn't believe it. Awfully. You see, however stupid I am about it,
I keep thinking, I keep thinking--from time to time, of course, not
all the while. It's impossible, I think, for the devils to forget to
drag me down to hell with their hooks when I die. Then I
wonder--hooks? Where would they get them? What of? Iron hooks? Where
do they forge them? Have they a foundry there of some sort? The monks
in the monastery probably believe that there's a ceiling in hell, for
instance. Now I'm ready to believe in hell, but without a ceiling. It
makes it more refined, more enlightened, more Lutheran that is. And,
after all, what does it matter whether it has a ceiling or hasn't?
But, do you know, there's a damnable question involved in it? If
there's no ceiling there can be no hooks, and if there are no hooks
it all breaks down, which is unlikely again, for then there would be
none to drag me down to hell, and if they don't drag me down what
justice is there in the world? Il
faudrait les inventer, those hooks, on purpose for me
alone, for, if you only knew, Alyosha, what a blackguard I am."

"But there are
no hooks there," said Alyosha, looking gently and seriously at
his father.

"Yes, yes, only
the shadows of hooks, I know, I know. That's how a Frenchman
described hell: 'J'ai bu l'ombre
d'un cocher qui avec l'ombre d'une brosse frottait l'ombre d'une
carrosse.' How do you know there are no hooks, darling?
When you've lived with the monks you'll sing a different tune. But go
and get at the truth there, and then come and tell me. Anyway it's
easier going to the other world if one knows what there is there.
Besides, it will be more seemly for you with the monks than here with
me, with a drunken old man and young harlots ... though you're like
an angel, nothing touches you. And I dare say nothing will touch you
there. That's why I let you go, because I hope for that. You've got
all your wits about you. You will burn and you will burn out; you
will be healed and come back again. And I will wait for you. I feel
that you're the only creature in the world who has not condemned me.
My dear boy, I feel it, you know. I can't help feeling it."

And he even began
blubbering. He was sentimental. He was wicked and sentimental.

Elders

Some of my readers
may imagine that my young man was a sickly, ecstatic, poorly
developed creature, a pale, consumptive dreamer. On the contrary,
Alyosha was at this time a well-grown, red-cheeked, clear-eyed lad of
nineteen, radiant with health. He was very handsome, too, graceful,
moderately tall, with hair of a dark brown, with a regular, rather
long, oval-shaped face, and wide-set dark gray, shining eyes; he was
very thoughtful, and apparently very serene. I shall be told,
perhaps, that red cheeks are not incompatible with fanaticism and
mysticism; but I fancy that Alyosha was more of a realist than any
one. Oh! no doubt, in the monastery he fully believed in miracles,
but, to my thinking, miracles are never a stumbling-block to the
realist. It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The
genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength
and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted
with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his
own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as
a fact of nature till then unrecognized by him. Faith does not, in
the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If
the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to
admit the miraculous also. The Apostle Thomas said that he would not
believe till he saw, but when he did see he said, "My Lord and
my God!" Was it the miracle forced him to believe? Most likely
not, but he believed solely because he desired to believe and
possibly he fully believed in his secret heart even when he said, "I
do not believe till I see."

I shall be told,
perhaps, that Alyosha was stupid, undeveloped, had not finished his
studies, and so on. That he did not finish his studies is true, but
to say that he was stupid or dull would be a great injustice. I'll
simply repeat what I have said above. He entered upon this path only
because, at that time, it alone struck his imagination and presented
itself to him as offering an ideal means of escape for his soul from
darkness to light. Add to that that he was to some extent a youth of
our last epoch--that is, honest in nature, desiring the truth,
seeking for it and believing in it, and seeking to serve it at once
with all the strength of his soul, seeking for immediate action, and
ready to sacrifice everything, life itself, for it. Though these
young men unhappily fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is,
in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice,
for instance, five or six years of their seething youth to hard and
tedious study, if only to multiply tenfold their powers of serving
the truth and the cause they have set before them as their goal--such
a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength of many of them. The path
Alyosha chose was a path going in the opposite direction, but he
chose it with the same thirst for swift achievement. As soon as he
reflected seriously he was convinced of the existence of God and
immortality, and at once he instinctively said to himself: "I
want to live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise."
In the same way, if he had decided that God and immortality did not
exist, he would at once have become an atheist and a socialist. For
socialism is not merely the labor question, it is before all things
the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism
to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to
mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth. Alyosha
would have found it strange and impossible to go on living as before.
It is written: "Give all that thou hast to the poor and follow
Me, if thou wouldst be perfect."

Alyosha said to
himself: "I can't give two roubles instead of 'all,' and only go
to mass instead of 'following Him.' " Perhaps his memories of
childhood brought back our monastery, to which his mother may have
taken him to mass. Perhaps the slanting sunlight and the holy image
to which his poor "crazy" mother had held him up still
acted upon his imagination. Brooding on these things he may have come
to us perhaps only to see whether here he could sacrifice all or only
"two roubles," and in the monastery he met this elder. I
must digress to explain what an "elder" is in Russian
monasteries, and I am sorry that I do not feel very competent to do
so. I will try, however, to give a superficial account of it in a few
words. Authorities on the subject assert that the institution of
"elders" is of recent date, not more than a hundred years
old in our monasteries, though in the orthodox East, especially in
Sinai and Athos, it has existed over a thousand years. It is
maintained that it existed in ancient times in Russia also, but
through the calamities which overtook Russia--the Tartars, civil war,
the interruption of relations with the East after the destruction of
Constantinople--this institution fell into oblivion. It was revived
among us towards the end of last century by one of the great
"ascetics," as they called him, Païssy Velitchkovsky,
and his disciples. But to this day it exists in few monasteries only,
and has sometimes been almost persecuted as an innovation in Russia.
It flourished especially in the celebrated Kozelski Optin Monastery.
When and how it was introduced into our monastery I cannot say. There
had already been three such elders and Zossima was the last of them.
But he was almost dying of weakness and disease, and they had no one
to take his place. The question for our monastery was an important
one, for it had not been distinguished by anything in particular till
then: they had neither relics of saints, nor wonder-working ikons,
nor glorious traditions, nor historical exploits. It had flourished
and been glorious all over Russia through its elders, to see and hear
whom pilgrims had flocked for thousands of miles from all parts.

What was such an
elder? An elder was one who took your soul, your will, into his soul
and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your own will
and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self-abnegation.
This novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation, is undertaken
voluntarily, in the hope of self-conquest, of self-mastery, in order,
after a life of obedience, to attain perfect freedom, that is, from
self; to escape the lot of those who have lived their whole life
without finding their true selves in themselves. This institution of
elders is not founded on theory, but was established in the East from
the practice of a thousand years. The obligations due to an elder are
not the ordinary "obedience" which has always existed in
our Russian monasteries. The obligation involves confession to the
elder by all who have submitted themselves to him, and to the
indissoluble bond between him and them.

The story is told,
for instance, that in the early days of Christianity one such novice,
failing to fulfill some command laid upon him by his elder, left his
monastery in Syria and went to Egypt. There, after great exploits, he
was found worthy at last to suffer torture and a martyr's death for
the faith. When the Church, regarding him as a saint, was burying
him, suddenly, at the deacon's exhortation, "Depart all ye
unbaptized," the coffin containing the martyr's body left its
place and was cast forth from the church, and this took place three
times. And only at last they learnt that this holy man had broken his
vow of obedience and left his elder, and, therefore, could not be
forgiven without the elder's absolution in spite of his great deeds.
Only after this could the funeral take place. This, of course, is
only an old legend. But here is a recent instance.

A monk was suddenly
commanded by his elder to quit Athos, which he loved as a sacred
place and a haven of refuge, and to go first to Jerusalem to do
homage to the Holy Places and then to go to the north to Siberia:
"There is the place for thee and not here." The monk,
overwhelmed with sorrow, went to the OEcumenical Patriarch at
Constantinople and besought him to release him from his obedience.
But the Patriarch replied that not only was he unable to release him,
but there was not and could not be on earth a power which could
release him except the elder who had himself laid that duty upon him.
In this way the elders are endowed in certain cases with unbounded
and inexplicable authority. That is why in many of our monasteries
the institution was at first resisted almost to persecution. Meantime
the elders immediately began to be highly esteemed among the people.
Masses of the ignorant people as well as men of distinction flocked,
for instance, to the elders of our monastery to confess their doubts,
their sins, and their sufferings, and ask for counsel and admonition.
Seeing this, the opponents of the elders declared that the sacrament
of confession was being arbitrarily and frivolously degraded, though
the continual opening of the heart to the elder by the monk or the
layman had nothing of the character of the sacrament. In the end,
however, the institution of elders has been retained and is becoming
established in Russian monasteries. It is true, perhaps, that this
instrument which had stood the test of a thousand years for the moral
regeneration of a man from slavery to freedom and to moral
perfectibility may be a two-edged weapon and it may lead some not to
humility and complete self-control but to the most Satanic pride,
that is, to bondage and not to freedom.

The elder Zossima
was sixty-five. He came of a family of landowners, had been in the
army in early youth, and served in the Caucasus as an officer. He
had, no doubt, impressed Alyosha by some peculiar quality of his
soul. Alyosha lived in the cell of the elder, who was very fond of
him and let him wait upon him. It must be noted that Alyosha was
bound by no obligation and could go where he pleased and be absent
for whole days. Though he wore the monastic dress it was voluntarily,
not to be different from others. No doubt he liked to do so. Possibly
his youthful imagination was deeply stirred by the power and fame of
his elder. It was said that so many people had for years past come to
confess their sins to Father Zossima and to entreat him for words of
advice and healing, that he had acquired the keenest intuition and
could tell from an unknown face what a new-comer wanted, and what was
the suffering on his conscience. He sometimes astounded and almost
alarmed his visitors by his knowledge of their secrets before they
had spoken a word.

Alyosha noticed that
many, almost all, went in to the elder for the first time with
apprehension and uneasiness, but came out with bright and happy
faces. Alyosha was particularly struck by the fact that Father
Zossima was not at all stern. On the contrary, he was always almost
gay. The monks used to say that he was more drawn to those who were
more sinful, and the greater the sinner the more he loved him. There
were, no doubt, up to the end of his life, among the monks some who
hated and envied him, but they were few in number and they were
silent, though among them were some of great dignity in the
monastery, one, for instance, of the older monks distinguished for
his strict keeping of fasts and vows of silence. But the majority
were on Father Zossima's side and very many of them loved him with
all their hearts, warmly and sincerely. Some were almost fanatically
devoted to him, and declared, though not quite aloud, that he was a
saint, that there could be no doubt of it, and, seeing that his end
was near, they anticipated miracles and great glory to the monastery
in the immediate future from his relics. Alyosha had unquestioning
faith in the miraculous power of the elder, just as he had
unquestioning faith in the story of the coffin that flew out of the
church. He saw many who came with sick children or relatives and
besought the elder to lay hands on them and to pray over them, return
shortly after--some the next day--and, falling in tears at the
elder's feet, thank him for healing their sick.